Tien Chiu

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March 7, 2019 by Tien Chiu

Reorganizing the rainbow

I’m currently suffering from the double whammy of an eyelid infection and a cold. Antibiotic ointment is helping with the eyelid infection and Sudafed is fending off the worst of the cold, but I’m still not seeing very well and my brain is DOA. However, I do have some energy, so yesterday I decided to reorganize my rayon machine embroidery stash.

A few years ago, in an impulse buy, I had ordered OVER 1 MILLION YARDS, 220 MOSTLY FULL LARGE SPOOLS (so said the eBay ad) of rayon machine embroidery thread. (Presumably from some kind of factory that went out of business, though I didn’t ask.)

The thread arrived in two big boxes weighing 65 pounds, and got tumbled randomly into two giant plastic tubs. But it was hard to figure out what colors I had, so I sorted them roughly by color into big plastic bags. Still too disorganized.

Yesterday I sorted them all into smaller boxes. Much tidier now:

Boxes of rayon machine embroidery thread
Boxes of rayon machine embroidery thread

Each spool is 5500 yards when full (some are partially used). A box holds 16-18 spools:

box of rayon machine embroidery thread
A box of rayon machine embroidery thread – about 70,000-80,000 yards!

And here’s a pic of the entire collection. (Photobomber cat added for scale.)

Full collection of rayon machine embroidery threads. (With cat.)
My lovely Tigress, center of the universe.
Oh yeah – and over 1 million yards of rayon machine embroidery thread!

Believe it or not, I’m actually short a few colors of a full rainbow set – I don’t have any yellow-greens, red-purples, or blue-purples. Fortunately my friend Alison just asked me what she should get me for a combined birthday/Christmas gift from last year…hee!

In case you’re wondering what I plan to do with the stuff – two words: velvet pile!

Given the glacial pace at which velvet is woven, I think I can safely be said to have a lifetime supply. (And then some.) But hey – at least I won’t run out!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: velvet

Previous post: Relearning laziness
Next post: Science, hypothesis testing, and painted warp samples

Comments

  1. kathyo says

    March 7, 2019 at 9:11 am

    Looks lovely! Now for a place to stow the tubs….. 😉

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